Sabine Rau-Oberhuber is one of the early pioneers of the circular economy and Co-Founder of Turntoo, a Dutch service company focused on achieving a circular economy. She developed some of the first business models and circularity strategies and contributed to shaping the thinking around the circular economy transition.
Turntoo works with manufacturers and consults with clients to help facilitate new processes and methods that reduce or eliminate material waste. The company also assists municipalities on circular city strategies and area development.
Turntoo regards the necessary transformation taking place on four levels: the design of products and supply chains; the financial and business models involved; the data and IT infrastructure supporting the transition and the mental transformation leading to a new way of thinking. With a multidisciplinary team, Turntoo is working with clients that wish to transform to a regenerative model.
Together with her husband, internationally recognized architect and sustainable pioneer Thomas Rau, Rau-Oberhuber co-authored the book Material Matters, which dissects and critiques our current linear systems of production, consumption and waste, proposing a new economic paradigm to radically change the status quo. One of the ideas proposed in the book is that buildings should be given a raw materials “passport” and material rights to keep them out of the landfill and instead in a constant cycle of use.
Statement Sabine Oberhuber:
Who Owns Material? And how can we achieve that material is used and at the same time preserved for the next generations? Material preservation for the future means that from the mine to the consumer, all agreements must be based on the principle: material use instead of material consumption. This means that the ownership of material can be organized in the sense of a generation contract and thus becomes a service.
Photo: Marco Magielse